These centers, which celebrated their 30th anniversaries this year, have served as cornerstones of the nation's high-performance computing and communications strategy. They helped push the limits of advanced computing hardware and software, even as they provided supercomputer access to a broad cross-section of academic researchers, enabling the study of everything from subatomic particles to the structure of the early universe.

To make sure these centers and the resources they deployed were knit together into a unified whole, NSF also made major investments in programs like the Partnerships for Advanced Computational Infrastructure (1997-2004), TeraGrid (2005-2010) and most recently the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE) (2011-present).

TeraGrid
The NSF-supported collaboration, commonly called the TeraGrid, prototyped a widely shared, comprehensive cyberinfrastructure for academic research and education.

Whenever computational researchers outgrow the resources of their lab or home institutions, they can turn to the national cyberinfrastructure and access capabilities hundreds or even thousands of times more powerful than any single scientist has access to.

The cumulative impact of these investments has been enormous, enabling tens of thousands of researchers from hundreds of institutions to make discoveries that would otherwise have been out of reach.

1986: NSFNET goes online, connecting five NSF-supported supercomputing centers. Initially created to link researchers to the nation's NSF-funded supercomputing centers, it ultimately evolves into the Internet.

NSF
The first large-scale implementation of Internet technologies in a complex environment of independently operated networks, NSFNET was an intellectual leap and forced the Internet community to solve technical issues arising from the rapidly increasing number of computers.

1987: Alcoa uses PSC’s first supercomputer to improve the design of the lightweight aluminum can. (PSC)

1988: University of Illinois physicist David Ceperley leads development of quantum Monte Carlo methods, a key method for studying complex quantum systems. (NCSA)

1992: SDSC launches Supercomputer Teacher Enhancement Program (STEP) — a forerunner to the award-winning TeacherTech program that has introduced hundreds of thousands of elementary school students to computational science. (SDSC)

1993: The world’s first freely available Web browser originates from NSF-funded research. Called “Mosaic,” it spurs a revolution in communications, business, education and entertainment that has had a trillion-dollar impact on the global economy. (NCSA)

NCSA
NCSA Mosaic 1.0, the first web browser to achieve popularity among the general public.

1994: First realistic 3D model of blood flow in human heart developed, leading to design of artificial heart valves. (PSC)

1995: On February 15, 1995, SDSC researchers collaborate with federal agents to track down the “most-wanted computer criminal in the United States.” (SDSC)

1997: NSF’s Partnerships for Advanced Computational Infrastructure (PACI) initiative funds two massive programs, one led by NCSA and the other by SDSC, to develop a national-scale computational environment for multidisciplinary, collaborative problem solving. (NSF)

1998: First trans-pacific circuit launched connecting Pacific Rim research and education networks with their counterparts in the United States. Now in its third iteration, TransPAC3 is still in use today. (Indiana)

1999: Molecular dynamics simulations, led by J. Andrew McCammon at the University of California, San Diego, lead to the development of Isentress, an anti-AIDS drug marketed by Merck. (SDSC)

SDSC
Molecular dynamics simulations, led by J. Andrew McCammon at UCSD, lead to the development of Isentress, an anti-AIDS drug marketed by Merck.

2001: NSF awards $53 million to four U.S. research institutions — NCSA, SDSC, the University of ChicagoArgonne National Laboratory and the Center for Advanced Computing Research (CACR) at Caltech — to build and deploy a distributed facility known as TeraGrid. (NSF)

2002: Caterpillar wins 2002 Private Sector Partnership Grand Challenge Award for their development of two visualization patents based on collaborations with NCSA. (NCSA)

Gregory P. Johnson, Romy Schneider, John Cazes, Karl Schulz and Bill Barth, The University of Texas at Austin; Frank Marks, NOAA; Fuqing Zheng, University of Pennsylvania; Yonghui Weng, Texas A&M University
A visualization of Hurricane Ike shows the storm developing in the Gulf of Mexico and making landfall at the Texas coast.

2009: Researchers use advanced computing to show how individual social security numbers can be guessed from public information on the Web. (PSC)

2012: University of Illinois researchers use PSC systems to show how large-scale traders used small stock purchases to game the system; discovery leads to rule changes in the NYSE and NASDAQ exchanges. (PSC)